A three-quarter male portrait in the lightest ink application in the small-format series — the marks so pale and tentative that the portrait approaches the condition of a pencil drawing, the ink seeming to barely cling to the paper's surface. The face is in slight right three-quarter: the broad outer contour of the head, the ear visible at the left, the eyes described with the most marks in the composition — the two eye circles and the brow lines above — and below them the nose, the lips, the jaw. The hair is described with a few light arcs above the brow. The overall quality is of a face observed at distance or with extreme speed.
The lightness of the marks may reflect a pen that was running dry, a more tentative observational moment, or a deliberate choice to work with reduced pressure. Whatever its cause, the result is a portrait that reads differently from the bold, assertive marks of Works 1546 and 1551: where those portraits impose themselves on the paper, this one barely settles, the face appearing as an impression rather than a description.
The three-quarter male face with its broad jaw and somewhat square head reads as a specific individual despite the marks' lightness — the specific form of the nose and the placement of the eyes are enough to identify a particular person. The sparseness of the portrait connects it to the tradition of quick observation drawing — the sketch made in a moment of social encounter, the minimum necessary to recall a face.